Teaching your dog to stay is one of the most important skills your dog can learn. Staying is not only a basic behavioral cue, but it also makes living with a dog easier by successfully communicating so you don’t rush out the door. Staying is also a foundational skill if you want to explore any kind of dog sport or activity.
Supplies needed to teach your dog to stay:
- Quiet area for training
- Small treats your dog is excited about
- Patient
Steps to teach your dog to stay
For many dogs, the easiest way to teach Stand on cues is to teach Sit-Stay or Lie down. Eventually, you’ll use these same steps to teach how to stay still, but that’s often harder to learn for dogs. Before training your dog to stay, make sure your dog understands the Sit and/or Down signal well.
Step 1: Start inside your house or another very quiet area without a lot of distractions. Cue your dog Sit or Down. Praise and reward your dog for sitting, letting go with a Release signal, or tossing a reward to get the dog to change position.
Step 2: Signal your dog to sit down again and this time wait a few seconds before treating and releasing your dog with lots of praise and treats. Repeat, wait a few seconds before handling and releasing. This is where patience is especially important. The goal here is not about how long your dog will hold that position, but about building up the duration slowly, so just starting with a few seconds should suffice.
Step 3: After a few repetitions, slowly, in increments of only a few seconds, increase the amount of time you ask the dog to hold the Sit or Lie position before praising and releasing. If your dog wakes up, that’s okay! Just ask him to Sit/Sit down again, wait a few seconds then give him a compliment and treat.
Step 4: When your dog repeatedly holds the Sit/Down position for a short period of time, 10 to 20 seconds, give the verbal cue of your choice to Stay, such as “Wait” or “Stay” ” by asking your dog to Sit/Down, give verbal cues and then wait a few seconds before treating/release.
Step 5: Gradually increase the amount of time you ask your dog to stay still. Just remember to slightly increase the amount of time you ask your dog to hold each time, making sure to praise and reward the dog for a job well done.
Step 6: In addition to increasing the amount of time you ask your dog to sit or lie down, start gradually increasing the amount of distraction around your dog. Slowly move around your dog while he is in the Stay position, then increase the level of distractions such as throwing toys and then venturing out into areas with more sights and sounds. Build up the level of distraction slowly until your dog can stay around high levels of distraction, such as being around other dogs.
Break hint to stay:
If at any time your dog violates the Stay Rule, do not scold or punish him; instead, just calmly ask your dog to Sit/Down again, but this time ask for a slightly shorter Sit time – keep your dog successful. When a dog breaks his Stay Time, he is reporting that he is not ready to handle that level of distraction or the time spent there, which is important information for us as is a dog owner/trainer. As a general rule: End your training session on a positive note, when your dog has completed the exercise excellently.
